May 6 The Dalai Lama speaks on compassion and Osama bin Laden

The Dalai Lama sat cross-legged in a white chair at the University of Southern California, wrapped in a crimson robe and wearing a red USC cap on his head, and spoke about Osama bin Laden and reactions to his death.

His Holiness emphasized the need to find a distinction between the action and the actor; that his action must be brought to justice, but with the actor we must have compassion and a sense of concern. The countermeasure, no matter what form it takes, has to be compassionate action, he went on to say. Forgiveness, however, does not mean that one should forget. At the University of Limerick, the spiritual leader talked about extending our compassion beyond the world of our friends and “neutral people” to our enemies. “Once your…genuine sense of concern of well-being reaches your enemy then that compassion is genuine trained compassion, unbiased, limitless, infinite. That we can do because of [our] marvelous intelligence.

He gave as an example a Buddhist monk who had spent close to 20 years in a Chinese gulag.

“He told me during that period…he faced some danger…danger of forgetting compassion or losing compassion,” said His Holiness.

According to the Dalai Lama, the greatest hindrances to compassion are anger and hatred, emotions we must learn to control to find true happiness.

The Dalai Lama sat cross-legged in a white chair at the University of Southern California, wrapped in a crimson robe and wearing a red USC cap on his head, and spoke about Osama bin Laden and reactions to his death.

His Holiness emphasized the need to find a distinction between the action and the actor; that his action must be brought to justice, but with the actor we must have compassion and a sense of concern. The countermeasure, no matter what form it takes, has to be compassionate action, he went on to say. Forgiveness, however, does not mean that one should forget. At the University of Limerick, the spiritual leader talked about extending our compassion beyond the world of our friends and “neutral people” to our enemies. “Once your…genuine sense of concern of well-being reaches your enemy then that compassion is genuine trained compassion, unbiased, limitless, infinite. That we can do because of [our] marvelous intelligence.

He gave as an example a Buddhist monk who had spent close to 20 years in a Chinese gulag.

“He told me during that period…he faced some danger…danger of forgetting compassion or losing compassion,” said His Holiness.

According to the Dalai Lama, the greatest hindrances to compassion are anger and hatred, emotions we must learn to control to find true happiness.